Let's Get It On!_ The Making of MMA and Its Ultimate Referee - Big John Mccarthy [64]
I also wanted everyone to be comfortable with what would happen. This was why I started the ritual of talking to the fighters I’d be officiating beforehand, something I still do to this day. Giving them the chance to ask questions before they pressed into the unknown seemed to ease some of the anxiety.
This wasn’t something Rorion or SEG asked me to do. Maybe part of it was that I was trying to keep myself busy, but mostly it just made sense to me.
UFC 3 showcased a handful of debut fighters along with returnees Royce Gracie and Ken Shamrock. The sixteen-man tournament had been a gruesome marathon with too many characters for WOW to handle and for the crowd to follow, so it was back to the eight-man scheme.
I performed my first referee stoppage when Harold Howard bludgeoned Roland Payne with his fist in one of the quarterfinal matches. Payne started to roll for cover before he went out, so I stepped in to make sure he didn’t receive further damage.
“Intelligent defense” was a good term because it put the decision-making responsibility on me, and I had some leeway in my judgment. It was also a hell of a lot better than leaving it up to the corners.
In another quarterfinal, Keith Hackney whaled on Emanuel Yarbrough, a onetime world amateur sumo champion who outweighed Hackney by more than 400 pounds. This was one of the saddest fights I’ve ever had to referee because Yarbrough was a nice man but could hardly move his 618-pound body. Once listed in Guinness World Records as the heaviest athlete, Yarbrough is to this day the stoutest man ever to enter the Octagon.
Elaine posing with the promotion’s largest fighter, Emanuel Yarbrough, at UFC
Hackney, a last-minute addition who’d trained in kenpo karate, had come to fight. After circling Yarbrough for a few seconds, Hackney knocked him down with an open-handed slap to the head. Yarbrough toppled, and Hackney rushed in. Yarbrough rose to his knees and pulled his tiny opponent into his refrigerator-sized chest and started assaulting the back of Hackney’s head.
Hackney whipped himself around fast, but Yarbrough wouldn’t let him go that easily. He grabbed and ripped Hackney’s black tank top right off his body. Yarbrough then used his gaining momentum to push Hackney back against the Octagon’s gate, which had the same flip-latch you would see on any backyard fencing. The latch unhinged under the pressure, and Yarbrough pushed Hackney right out of the cage.
We had to stop the bout momentarily, bend the latch’s metal back into place, and restart the pair center cage.
The unexpected restart, the first one I’d ever performed in the Octagon, proved to be a tide turner. Hackney realized quickly he’d fare much better staying out of his opponent’s reach, so Yarbrough plodded around the cage chasing him, chewing on his mouthpiece.
Hackney threw a kick, and Yarbrough caught it, again trying to suck his opponent back into his hippo hug. Hackney threw another haymaker, and Yarbrough went down again, rolling onto his stomach to find refuge from Hackney’s punches. Hackney ended up beating down on the stationary Yarbrough like a kid who’d gotten a drum for Christmas. It was hard to watch a guy who couldn’t get himself back up to a starting position because he was carrying too much weight.
“Tell me if you want out, and I’ll stop it,” I told Yarbrough over and over, but he didn’t say a word.
Finally, he said, “That’s enough,” and I put an end to the punishment.
In Royce’s quarterfinal bout, he met the dynamic fighter Kimo Leopoldo. The soft-spoken Hawaiian, whose discipline was listed as freestyle, had a foreboding look and a flair for the dramatic. Wide-shouldered, muscled, and heavily tattooed, with a trimmed goatee and hair slicked back into a thin braid that thinned to the bottom like a rat’s tail, Leopoldo trudged through the crowd to the cage dragging a six-foot wooden